It might be possible to make a case that up ‘til this point DeFries
bears only limited responsibility for the events that have been taking
place. To be sure, he was the leading member of the political
committee which, snowed by Manning’s charm, made the mistake of
choosing him as a reform candidate for Congress. DeFries has
served as a minder of detail for Manning both in Congress and in the
Army. And he did stage manage Manning’s successful
re-election
campaign in 1944 from his Army office, even though Manning has come to
think of his Congressional career as old hat and it is against the law
for DeFries to have done it.

Perhaps the most damning
thing he’s done is to speak up at the right wrong moment about the fish
kills in Chesapeake Bay and set Manning to thinking of Dr. Karst’s
radioactive medical dust as a potential weapon of war.

Now,
however, by agreeing to serve as the personal agent who carries the
dust to England, DeFries compromises himself beyond all
question.
He joins the conspiracy. He becomes an active participant in
an
unconstitutional scheme.

It
is a decision that will have fatal personal consequences.
While
“sitting on that cargo of dust” in the course of delivering Manning’s
weapon to the British, DeFries is exposed to “cumulative minimal
radioactive poisoning” which in time is going to kill him.

It
seems odd that something like that could be allowed to
happen.
For one thing, it means that the scientists and technicians who’ve been
manufacturing and storing the dust haven’t had sense enough to put it
in shielded containers. And neither have they kept DeFries
from
harm by issuing him a protective suit and armor of the sort they
habitually wear when dealing with radioactive materials. They
haven’t so much as pinned a strip of film to his lapel to fog up and
reveal exposure to radiation.

Who was asleep on the job?

It’s
all the stranger since DeFries himself certainly ought to know
better. He’s told us over and over again just how toxic the
stuff
is and he’s fully aware of the need for safeguard against it.
We’ve seen him suiting up before entering Dr. Karst’s lab, and listened
to him discussing protective gear as a possible defense against the
dust with Manning.

So where was Manning in all this? Why
wasn’t he looking out for DeFries?

As
it is, having been given responsibility for transporting the weapon to
England, DeFries forgets everything he knows and doesn’t trouble
himself to ask anyone what precautions he ought to observe in handling
the dust. Instead, he watches over it like a first-time
babysitter. If we take him literally, he actually spends a
week
sitting on top of the canisters.

He must really
be stupid – and he will pay for it.

On
the other hand, just like the Army Chief of Staff pushing Manning’s
case with the Secretary of War, and then the Secretary of War working
to convince the White House that it ought to give Manning a private
meeting with the President as early as tomorrow, while DeFries is
carrying out Manning’s mission, he’s temporarily granted something of
Manning’s magical ability to turn the head of higher authority.

After
he’s arrived safely in England with his cargo of dust, DeFries is
commanded to appear at a Royal audience. But he won’t
go.
He won’t leave the dust. Instead, he’s called upon by a
Member of
Parliament and a “Mr. Windsor” – whom we are to take as the Prime
Minister and King.

They ask him questions and DeFries answers
them as best he can considering that ignorance is one of his major
credentials for being here. Again, we aren’t told what either
the
questions or the answers are. Nevertheless, this Army captain
must have managed to be persuasive because the next thing we know the
British are ready to use the diabolical new weapon, even though to do
so means agreeing to American terms of settlement of the war.

Surrender to the US, that is.

The
Prime Minister’s government will fall over this. And the King
will violate constitutional precedent. Nonetheless, it seems
that
both men must have agreed to the plan. We just aren’t allowed
to
hear them doing it or why they do it.

After British warnings of
direness-to-come and German failure to capitulate, thirteen British
bombers – a strange and ill-omened number – leave England bound for
Berlin armed with the dust. At Manning’s request, DeFries is
aboard one of them as an official observer, as though it were somehow
possible for him to become neutral and objective once again after all
he’s done to make the bombing happen.

The planes approach Berlin
from different angles and slice the city like a pizza, dropping
canister after canister of Karst-Obre dust as they go. The
canisters are armed with explosive devices to disperse the dust as
widely as possible.

These prototype dirty bombs leave the
streets and structures of the city standing intact. But so
lethal
are they that every living thing in Berlin is killed: Men,
women
and children – guilty and innocent alike. Dogs and
cats.
Parakeets and pigeons. Rats and mice. Earthworms,
ants and
butterflies. All of them dead.

The narrator doesn’t tell
us how many casualties this amounts to – but at the time that Heinlein
wrote “Solution Unsatisfactory” in 1940, the human population of Berlin
was nearly four-and-a-half million people. And every last one
of
them imagined as dying from the dust.

As an index of the
magnitude of the death toll resulting from this fictional bombing raid,
when the United States dropped two Atomic Bombs on Japan in August
1945, the targets would be substantially smaller cities and the human
deaths far fewer. A sober latter-day estimate suggests that
66,000 people were killed in Hiroshima, and another 39,000 in
Nagasaki. In both cases, three-quarters of the population
would
survive, at least for the time being. With more than forty
times
as many deaths as from both Atom Bombs put together, the radioactive
sterilization of Berlin in this story has to rank as the greatest
atrocity in human history.

DeFries may have transported the
devil dust to England, helped persuade British leaders to use it and
borne witness to the dropping of the canisters over Berlin.
But
he doesn’t immediately appreciate the overwhelming, disproportionate
and irrevocable nature of the human catastrophe he’s been party to.

In
contrast, Dr. Estelle Karst understands as soon as the dust has been
used that Col. Manning has abused her trust and perverted her research
in the medical use of radioactive isotopes. Her choice of the
dust to commit suicide is not an accident or a convenience.
It’s
an act of moral protest.

The awfulness of what has happened only
becomes apparent to DeFries after he has seen films showing the death
of Berlin. He says, “You have not seen
them; they never were
made public, but they were of great use in convincing the other nations
of the world that peace was a good idea.”

There’s a gaping hole
in the narrative at this point, all the more significant for being
completely unacknowledged. What was American public reaction
to
the overnight death of four-and-a-half million people in Germany?

What
did the newspapers and the radio pundits have to say about the British
acting in such an overwhelming and barbaric fashion against the
civilian population of an enemy city? Did they
criticize
them for having done it?

When did the American public learn that
the weapon was actually a US invention, and England had only
been
given one-time use of it in order to test it on Berlin? Did
the
President speak up then and take personal responsibility for having
sent them the dust and talking them into using it?

How
did the Secretary of War and the Army Chief of Staff react when they
found out that they’d allowed themselves to be deceived, used and
outflanked by Col. Manning?

And was there protest when the
public discovered that it wasn’t going to be allowed to see what this
new American secret weapon had done to Berlin, but films were being
shown to people in other countries as a warning not to get out of line?

We’re never told.

What
we do learn from DeFries is that he himself is a changed man for having
witnessed those reconnaissance films. They make an impression
on
him that watching canisters of K-O dust being dropped one by one from a
bomber at night had not.

In the language of Christian belief
which Heinlein absorbed as a child but ordinarily didn’t use in his
science fiction stories, he has DeFries say, “…So far as I am
concerned, I left what soul I had in the projection room and I have not
had one since.”

Heed what the man is telling us: For
all his superficial appearance of artless speaking, he has no soul.

If
he had told us so at the outset, rather than at this late moment, it
most certainly would have had an effect on what we’ve made of all he
has to say. As it is, his lack of a soul – or lack of a
conscience – might go a way toward explaining all the gaps,
contradictions and unlikelihoods we’ve taken note of in this narrative.

5. Secretary of Dust

After the dusting of Berlin, Germany is ready to
capitulate.

Britain is slower to surrender.

The
immediate assumption of the British people is that the weapon which has
ended the war is their weapon, and they’re eager to make Germany pay
for the years of bombing they’ve had to endure. Consequently,
when the Prime Minister reveals the private bargain he’s struck with
the United States for its loan of the dust, his government falls.

However,
British reaction turns around after the King, rather than uttering
words that have been handed to him to read from the throne, as is
customary, speaks out on his own authority.

Once more we aren’t
allowed to hear what someone actually has to say at a crucial turn,
only to accept what takes place as a result, even though what happens
may be unlikely. In this case, the King advocates
surrender. And so persuasive is he that his voice “sold the
idea
to England and a national coalition government was formed” for the
purpose of yielding British sovereignty.

Lucky thing for them,
too. Until the British unite in a national consensus to throw
up
their hands, Manning is prepared to convince them to do it by taking
out London, with the prospective death of another eight-and-a-half
million people, including his sometime allies, the Prime Minister and
King.

Or, in the more delicate way in which DeFries
puts it:

“I don’t know whether we would have dusted London to enforce
our
terms or not; Manning thinks we would have done so.”

What
Manning thinks has now become significant. After Berlin, his
power is greatly increased. Instead of being thanked for his
services, given a retirement promotion to general, and sent back to
Congress out of harm’s way, a place is made for him at the President’s
side as a chief advisor and spokesman.

Once again, his righthand man is brought along
with him. Or, as DeFries tells us:

“By
this time, Manning was an unofficial member of the Cabinet; ‘Secretary
of Dust,’ the President called him in one of his rare jovial
moods. As for me, I attended Cabinet meetings, too.”

Speaking
in his new capacity, Manning completely dominates his first Cabinet
meeting. As “Secretary of Dust,” it’s his estimate that only
a
small window of time exists – ninety days or less – during which the
United States has the advantage of sole possession of the new
weapon. He proposes that all aircraft around the world not in
the
service of the United States Army be grounded, including American
commercial and civilian planes.

He says, “‘After
that we can deal with complete world disarmament and permanent methods
of control.’”

When
it is objected that this would be unconstitutional, he
answers:
“‘The issue is sharp,
gentlemen, and we might as well drag it out in
the open. We can be dead men, with everything in due order,
constitutional, and technically correct; or we can do what has to be
done, stay alive, and try to straighten out the legal aspects later.’”

The
Secretary of Labor – the newest and least powerful Cabinet
member, but the most vocal among them now in resisting Manning’s
appeals to fear and urgency – concedes that control of the dust is
going to be necessary. However, he says:

“‘But where I
differ from the Colonel is in the method. What he proposes is
a
military dictatorship imposed by force on the whole world.
Admit
it, Colonel. Isn’t that what you are proposing?’

“Manning did not dodge
it. ‘That is what I am proposing.’”

Let’s
not dodge this one, either. Instead of hurrying on just as
though
nothing remarkable has been said, the way the story does, let’s
consider what is happening for a second.

This is yet another
unlikely event we’re being asked to accept, another whopper like
believing that an Army colonel could win a private appointment with the
President of the United States for tomorrow while declining to tell
anyone what it’s about.

Now we’re being asked to imagine that
everyone at a Cabinet meeting has been told to shove over and an extra
chair has been pulled up to the table so that this same Army colonel
can sit in. And not merely as a guest, either. The
President introduces him to the various Cabinet members by telling them
to consider Manning a de
facto Secretary on a par with themselves.

What’s
more, this new unofficial Secretary is given the floor. The
President of the United States, apparently in complete agreement with
everything he has to say, is content to sit back passively through the
rest of the meeting and “let Manning bear the brunt of the argument.”

Speaking
on behalf of the President, this colonel-who-is-more-than-a-colonel
informs the Cabinet Secretaries that since the United States has sole
possession of the dust for the moment, US policy, effective
immediately, is going to be to violate the Constitution at home and to
impose a military dictatorship on the world.

Even if we grant
Manning all the unique privilege we’re told he now has in the story,
the course he is indicating is such a radical break with the usual
assumptions of American politics that we have to wonder at the
temperate way in which his words are received.

As a reality
check, imagine the reaction of the Cabinet in 1945 if Gen. Leslie
Groves, the Army officer in charge of the actual development of the
Atomic Bomb and a man not known for his modesty, had presumed to speak
to the assembled Secretaries in such an arrogant, presumptuous and
authoritarian a manner as this. At the very least, I think
he’d
have instantly lost all credibility and that the good sense, if not the
sanity, of the President would have been called into question for
sponsoring this kind of powertrip.

Even within the much more
accommodating confines of “Solution Unsatisfactory,” we have to wonder
why the Secretary of War – whose equivalent today would be the
Secretary of Defense – doesn’t speak up.

I mean, there he is,
seated across the conference table from Manning at the left hand of the
President. The military is his area of
responsibility. This
officer ought to be under his authority. And not only has
Col.
Manning already broken the oath he’s sworn to support and defend the
Constitution and is proposing to do it some more, he’s betrayed him
personally.

Manning has developed a radiological weapon of
unprecedented deadliness at the Army lab he commands without informing
his superiors of what he is doing. By some arcane means, he
has
managed to persuade the Army Chief of Staff and the Secretary of War to
arrange an urgent private meeting for him with the President, while
refusing to tell them why such a meeting is either necessary or
appropriate. Then, over their heads, he has convinced the
President to introduce this horrendous new weapon into the ongoing war
between Britain and Germany, with the slaughter of millions of
civilians.

As his reward for this usurpation of power, Col.
Manning has been granted informal Cabinet status, and now speaks on
behalf of the President. It’s his assertion that America’s
enemies – and maybe its friends, as well – are on the verge of
launching an attack on the United States with radioactive dust of their
own. The only way to be secure in this brave new world of
Manning’s making is for the US to use its advantage while it has it and
impose military dictatorship on the world. Right now.

Under
circumstances like these, you’d think that the Secretary of War would
have a question or two for him. As one possibility, he might
ask
Manning just who he has in mind for the job of world dictator?

But
in telling about this crucial Cabinet meeting, the narrator doesn’t
even so much as mention the Secretary of War. Maybe he
couldn’t
make the meeting and they had to go on without him, or perhaps he just
had nothing to say that day.

What DeFries does recall happening
in the wake of Manning’s confirmation that he is advocating the
imposition of a global military dictatorship is a counterproposal from
the Secretary of Labor. He suggests that the present moment
of
opportunity be used to establish a worldwide democratic commonwealth,
and then control of the dust be turned over to the new world government.

But
Manning replies that this isn’t feasible. While he personally
would lay down his life in order to accomplish global democracy, most
of the world has no experience of democracy nor any love for it.

He says:

“‘It’s
preposterous to talk about a world democracy for many years to
come. If you turn the secret of the dust over to such a body,
you
will be arming the world to commit suicide.’”

Manning then sets
forth a scenario of an inevitable series of back-and-forth dustings
which will kill three-quarters of the world’s population and reduce
human culture to the level of peasants living in villages.

If
previously it has been the territory of the Secretary of War that
Manning has usurped, it’s now the area of responsibility of the
Secretary of State he’s attempting to muscle in on. Up to
this
point, however, the Secretary of State has been silent, too.

DeFries
tells us, somewhat patronizingly, that he was “really a fine old
gentleman, and not stupid, but he was slow to assimilate new ideas.”

Now
this sweet old fudd speaks up on behalf of a policy of isolation, as
though he were an old-time backwoods politician addressing a bunch of
yahoos from a stump rather than the man in charge of American foreign
policy now faced with the diplomatic challenge of a lifetime.
He
suggests that we just “‘keep
the dust as our own secret, go our own
way, and let the rest of the world look out for itself. That
is
the only program that fits our traditions.’”

But Manning
dismisses this course of action, too. The research that other
countries are doing – or might do – into the new weapon won’t permit
the luxury of going our own way. What if it had been Germany
who’d made and used the dust first instead of the US? They
might
have done something awful with it.

He declares that “‘it
is the
best opinion of all the experts that we can’t maintain control of this
secret except by rigid policing’” – just as though there were no
problems with the words “best opinion,” “all the experts,” “maintain
control,” “secret” and “rigid policing.”

In the event, neither
the Secretary of Labor’s internationalism nor the Secretary of State’s
isolationism has a chance. The President’s mind is already
made
up in favor of Manning’s fear of Karst-Obre dust in the hands of others
who might be as ready to use it as the two of them have been.

With
two more unconstitutional moves, the President declares martial law in
the United States and, in what is called a “Peace Proposal,” informs
the leaders of every other nation that they must disarm
themselves. As a start, all airplanes capable of crossing the
Atlantic must be delivered into US hands and destroyed.
Failure
to comply with this will be considered an act of war.

Or, as
DeFries translates this diplomatic ultimatum, the American answer to
the touchy problem of a roomful of men all armed with .45s is, “‘Throw
down your guns, boys; we’ve got the drop on you.’”

6. The Four-Days War

There
are three gunslingers in particular that the narrator singles out as
posing potential threat to the United States – England, Japan and the
Eurasian Union.

However, America’s friend and
ally, England is no longer a problem. It's already in the act
of
throwing down its guns, thanks to the King’s radio address.

(Unless,
of course, like me you’re inclined to believe the persistent rumor that
a canister of K-O dust went missing during the bombing raid on Berlin –
I mean, all those planes, all those canisters, all that confusion – and
only got found again afterward. And the British, not wanting
to
cause a fuss over nothing, were too polite to mention they had it.)

As
for the Japanese, they may dismiss the lethal power of the dust as just
a story, and they may be convinced that they cannot be defeated, but
it’s possible to bully them into submission by pressing the right
psychological buttons.

DeFries tells us:

“The
negotiations were conducted very quietly indeed, but our fleet was
halfway from Pearl Harbor to Kobe, loaded with enough dust to sterilize
their six biggest cities, before they were concluded. Do you
know
what did it? This never hit the newspapers but it was the
wording
of the pamphlets we proposed to scatter before dusting.”

Now,
what do you suppose could have been said in those pamphlets – and, more
important, with what spin? – that wouldn’t just anger the Japanese, but
which having been shown to them would be sufficient to make them
instantly acknowledge their inferiority and bow low in
submission? It must have been something devastating.

This
leaves those unknown men who’ve been running the Eurasian Union since
the death (on this alternate timeline) of Joseph Stalin in
1941.
They’ve put Lenin and Stalin behind them. And they’ve held
their
country out of the war between England and Germany. Now
they’re
quick to agree to American terms. They declare themselves
willing
to cooperate in every way with the President’s ultimatum.

But
they’re only trying to trick the United States. Instead of
delivering their long-range aircraft to a field in Kansas to be parked
alongside the planes already surrendered by Germany and England, as
they’ve been directed to do, they launch a series of bombing raids over
the Arctic against New York, Washington and other cities with dust of
their own.

Exactly how successful these attacks were, we are
never told. DeFries says there’s no point in repeating what’s
been in the newspapers. But we’re assured that the Four-Days
War
was a near thing which America should have lost – “and we would have,
had it not been for an unlikely combination of luck, foresight and good
management.”

How close did the United States come to losing
the
Four-Days War? At least some of the planes that failed to
land in
Kansas made it through to New York with radioactive dust.
DeFries
tells us “we lost over eight hundred thousand people in Manhattan
alone.” Enemy planes must also have been successful in
dropping
dust on Washington since he says in passing that “Congress reconvened
at the temporary capital in St. Louis.”

But the Eurasian Union
is promptly paid back for what it’s done. The US sterilizes
the
cities of Moscow, Vladivostok and Irkutsk, with a combined population
of another four-and-a-half million people. And, just that
fast,
the war is over.

The part played by luck in America’s victory is
that one of the planes sent to bomb Moscow went off course and
arbitrarily picked the city of Ryazan as the place to drop its dust
instead. Completely by chance, this industrial center turned
out
to be the location of “the laboratory and plant which produced the only
supply of military radioactives in the Eurasian Union,” so the
Eurasians are unable to make any more dust.

Very good fortune,
that. Like firing a gun randomly into the air and having the
bullet fall to earth and kill a cat. And not just any cat,
either
– the King of the Cats. Right between the eyes.

As for
foresight and good management, that’s Manning covertly at
work.
It seems that one more time, in his role as Secretary of Dust, his
authority has grown.

DeFries says: “Manning never got
credit for it, but it is evident to me that he anticipated the
possibility of something like the Four-Days War and prepared for it in
a dozen different devious ways.”

Manning or somebody ought to
have been anticipating an attack on the US since once again, as on
other occasions in America’s history, some of them alluded to in
“Solution Unsatisfactory,” an incident has been deliberately provoked
in order to provide justification for the United States to go to war.

The Eurasians were goaded into fighting.

Just
consider: One of the reasons America had for dropping the
Bomb on
Japan to end World War II was to make an impression on the Soviet
Union. And enough of an impression was made to set off the
Cold
War.

Imagine if you will that in 1945 the United
States
had gone on to order the Russians either to disarm or suffer the
consequences and called this a “peace proposal” as in this
story.
An ultimatum like that would have immediately triggered a Hot War
exactly as it does here.

Not only are the Eurasians deliberately
pushed beyond their tolerance by the demand that they surrender all
their long range aircraft to the US and then disarm themselves, the
door for their attack has been left invitingly open.
Eurasia’s
bombers aren’t collected and destroyed on Eurasian soil.
Instead,
they’re pointed in the direction of Kansas and not inspected before
they go.

No wonder the attack which follows has been
anticipated. Air traffic in the United States is at a halt
and
military planes are standing by ready to intercept the Eurasian bombers
and shoot most of them down before they can reach their targets.

America
is also poised to make a counterattack. Vladivostok is a long
way
from anywhere; Irkutsk is off at the foot of Lake Baikal in Siberia;
and it’s possible to get lost while trying to fly to Moscow and wind up
in Ryazan. In order to successfully launch immediate
coordinated
strikes on targets like these, distant from the continental United
States and widely separated from each other, advance planning and
logistical work must have been done.

If we call preparation to
meet the Eurasian attack and then strike back decisively “foresight,”
the “good management” part is the holding of American casualties to an
acceptable minimum.

New York City is largely empty when it is
hit. A completely unfounded rumor of bubonic plague has been
circulated and everybody able to do it has deserted the city.
DeFries has no idea how so effective a whispering campaign was
organized and carried out, but he gives Manning credit for having
arranged it. And with such perfect timing that most people
escape
the Eurasian dust.

As for Washington, thanks to Manning’s doing,
Congress has gone into recess. The President has granted a
ten-day leave of absence to the civil service (an authority I wasn’t
aware he had) and then left town himself to make a sudden political
jaunt through the South. The only people who are still at
home to
receive the attack are the permanent population of the city.

DeFries
suggests that it must have been Manning who put the thought of going
off on a political swing in the President’s head. He couldn’t
have split the scene to save his own skin: “It is
inconceivable
that the President would have left Washington to escape personal
danger.”

That puts a nice face on it, but it’s bushwah.

Since
the dusting of Berlin, international tensions have been running
high. The President has declared martial law in the US and
told
all other governments that they must surrender immediately or fight the
United States. As a precautionary measure, he’s closed down
official Washington and sent it to visit the folks back home.
The
American military is on alert, anticipating imminent war with Eurasia.

This
is no time for kissing babies, and Manning hasn’t suddenly turned into
the President’s chief political advisor. He’s the
Secretary of
Dust. And when it’s the Secretary of Dust who whispers in the
President’s ear that now might be a good time to pay a visit to
Florida, the President doesn’t need to hear it twice. He’s on
the
next train south.

Anything else you may have been told is just a
cover story.

It
only takes four days for the war to be over – one day for the Eurasian
attack, a day for assessment of the damage, American counterattack on
the third day, and Eurasian surrender on the fourth. Very
shortly, the President can join the other survivors at the new
temporary capital in St. Louis.

So, how great has the cost been to America from
this invited catastrophe?

With
no newspapers to consult to find out what DeFries doesn’t tell us
because it’s been in the papers, it’s impossible to say with any
certainty. But the largest city in the United States, hub of
its
commerce and center of its publishing and broadcasting industries, is
now uninhabitable, and the nation’s capital and all its buildings and
records have been made inaccessible for years to come. The
focal
points of American life have been attacked, normal existence has been
shattered and refugees are everywhere.

If eight hundred thousand
people are dead in Manhattan alone, then at least several million
Americans must have been killed in all the cities struck – 666 times as
many as the three thousand people who died in the attacks on the World
Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001.

Without luck, foresight and good management, it
would have been far worse.